Wicked Uncle

Chapter IV

Dorinda travelled down to the Mill House next day in a very large Rolls which contained Mrs. Oakley, the nursery governess whose name was Florence Cole, Marty, herself, and, in front beside the chauffeur, Mrs. Oakley’s maid, who looked like an old retainer but had actually only been with her for a week. Nobody seemed to have been with her for very long except Marty. Florence Cole had done about ten days, and if Dorinda was any judge, she was rapidly working up to leave at the end of the month. The pay might be good, but Marty was definitely poison. As he bore no resemblance to his little fair-haired wisp of a mother, Dorinda concluded that he must take after Mr. Oakley, in which case it was perhaps not surprising that the latter had emerged from the war in the odour of prosperity. Marty was the most acquisitive little boy she had ever had the misfortune to meet. He wanted everything he saw, and bounced up and down on the well-sprung cushions demanding it at the top of his voice. If he didn’t get it he roared like a bull, and Mrs. Oakley said fretfully, “Really, Miss Cole!”

The first thing he wanted was a small black goat tethered by the side of the road, which they passed in a flash but which he lamented loudly until his attention was caught by Dorinda’s brooch. His mouth, which had been open to the fullest extent, fell to, cutting off a sirenlike scream half way up the scale, and a quite normal little boy’s voice said, “What’s that?” A grubby finger pointed.

Dorinda said, “It’s a brooch.”

“Why is it?”

“Why are you a little boy?”

Marty began to bounce.

“Why is it a brooch? I want to see it. Give it to me!”

“You can see it from there quite nicely, or you can come over here and look. It’s a Scotch brooch. It belonged to my great-grandmother. Those yellow stones are cairngorms. They come out of the Cairngorm mountains.”

“How do they come out?”

“People find them lying about there.”

“I want to go there and find some-I want to go now.”

Dorinda kept her head.

“It would be much too cold. There would be deep snow all over the place-you wouldn’t be able to find the stones.”

Marty had continued to bounce.

“How deep would the snow be?”

“It would be four foot six and a half inches. It would be right over your head.”

Marty was a plain, dark little boy. A dull red colour came into his face. He bounced harder.

“I don’t want it to be!”

Dorinda smiled at him.

“The snow will go away in summer.”

He bounced right out of his seat.

“I want to go now! I want your brooch! Undo it, quick!”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why can’t you? I want it!”

Mrs. Oakley, who had been leaning back with her eyes shut, now opened them and said in a hopeless tone,

“If he doesn’t get it he’ll scream.”

Dorinda regarded her with interest.

“Do you always give him things when he screams?”

Mrs. Oakley closed her eyes again.

“Oh, yes. He goes on screaming till I do, and my nerves won’t stand it.”

Dorinda wondered if anyone had tried what a good hard smack would do. She almost asked the question, but thought perhaps she had better not. Marty was opening his mouth. A roar was obviously imminent. Her fingers tingled as she unfastened the brooch and held it out. With a carefree smile he took it, jabbed the pin into her leg as far as it would go, and with a shriek of laughter tossed the brooch clean out of the top of the window, which happened to be two or three inches open. By the time the car had been stopped it was extremely difficult to identify the spot. After a half-hearted search they drove on, leaving Dorinda’s great-grandmother’s brooch somewhere by the wayside.

“Marty has a marvellously straight eye,” said Mrs. Oakley. “Martin will be so pleased. Fancy him getting right through the top of the window like that!”

Even Dorinda’s sweet temper found it difficult to respond. Florence Cole had obviously given up trying. She was a pale, rather puffy young woman who had been brought up to breathe through her nose, however difficult. Whenever the car stopped she could be heard doing so.

Marty continued to bounce and scream-for a wild rabbit whose scut glimmered away into a hedgerow, for an inn sign depicting a white hart on a green ground, for a cat asleep inside a cottage window, and finally for chocolate. Upon which Miss Cole, still breathing hard, opened her bag and produced a bar. He went to sleep over it after smearing his face and hands profusely. The resultant peace was almost too good to be true.

He slept until they arrived at the Mill House. There was a lot of shrubbery round it, and a dark, gloomy drive overhung with trees went winding up to the top of the hill, where the house stood in the open, exposed to every point of the compass except the south. It was a very large and perfectly hideous house, with patterns of red and yellow brick running about at random, and frightful little towers and balconies all over the place. Mrs. Oakley shivered and said the situation was very bracing. And then Marty woke up and began to roar for his tea. Dorinda wondered whether she would be having nursery tea, and felt selfishly relieved when she found that she wouldn’t. But she no longer expected Florence Cole to leave at the month. Her only doubt now was whether she would catch the last train tonight or the first tomorrow morning. In which case-no, she would not look after Marty-not for thousands a year-unless she had a free hand.

She had tea with Mrs. Oakley in a distressingly feminine apartment which she was thrilled to hear her employer call the boudoir. Dorinda had never encountered a boudoir before except in an old-fashioned novel. It lived up to her fondest dreams, with a rose and ivory carpet, rose and ivory curtains lined with pink, a couch with more cushions than she had ever before seen assembled at one time, and a general air of being tiresomely expensive.

Mrs. Oakley, in a rose-coloured negligée covered with frills, nestled among the cushions, whilst Dorinda sat on a horribly uncomfortable gold chair and poured out. Just as they were finishing, a knock came at the door. Mrs. Oakley said “Come in!” in rather a surprised voice, and Florence Cole, still in her outdoor things, advanced into the room. She wore an air of dogged purpose, and Dorinda knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth. She said it in quite a loud, determined voice.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Oakley, but I’m not staying. There’s a train at six, and I’m catching it. I’ve given that child his tea, and left him with the housemaid. She tells me his old nurse is in the village, and that she can manage him. I can’t. If there’s anyone who can, you’d better have her back. He’s just tried to pour the boiling kettle-water over my foot. If you ask me, he’s not safe.”

“He has such high spirits,” said Mrs. Oakley.

“He wants a good whipping!” said Miss Cole. A dull colour came into her face. “Are you going to pay me for the ten days I’ve put up with him, Mrs. Oakley? You’re not legally bound to, but I think anyone would say I’d earned it.”

Mrs. Oakley looked bewildered.

“I don’t know what I did with my purse,” she said. “It will be somewhere in my bedroom-if you don’t mind, Miss Brown. Perhaps you and Miss Cole could look for it together. It will be in that bag I had in the car.”

When they had found it, and Florence Cole had been paid a generous addition to cover her railway fare, her manner softened.

“If you like, Mrs. Oakley, I can stop and see Nurse Mason on my way through the village. Doris says I can’t miss the house.”

Mrs. Oakley fluttered.

“Oh, no, you can’t miss it. But perhaps she won’t come back. My husband thought Marty was getting too old for a nurse. She was very much upset about it. Perhaps she won’t come.”

“ Doris says she’ll jump at it,” said Florence Cole. “She says she’s devoted to Marty.” Her tone was that of one confronted by some phenomenon quite beyond comprehension.

Mrs. Oakley continued to flutter.

“Well, perhaps you’d better. But my husband mayn’t like it- perhaps Miss Brown-”

“I couldn’t possibly,” said Dorinda with unmistakable firmness.

Mrs. Oakley closed her eyes.

“Well then, perhaps-yes, it will be very kind if you will-only I hope my husband-”

Florence Cole said, “Goodbye, Mrs. Oakley,” and walked out of the room.

Dorinda went out on to the landing with her and shook hands.

“I hope you’ll get a nice job soon,” she said. “Have you anywhere to go?”

“Yes, I’ve got a married sister. Are you going to stay?”

“I shall if I can.”

Florence Cole said, “Well, if you ask me, it’s the kind of place to get out of.”

Dorinda remembered that afterwards.